As for the episode of stoning: it is rigorously established in the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar, in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim on the authority of al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib and Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh, and in the Sunan on the authority of Abū Hurayrah and others, that when the Jews sought judgment from the Messenger of God ﷺ concerning a Jewish man and woman who had committed adultery, he asked them, “What do you find in the Torah regarding stoning?” They replied, “We shame them—by blackening the face—and we flog them.” The Messenger of God ﷺ then ordered that the Torah be brought. When it was produced and they began to read from it while hiding the verse of stoning, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣūriyā placed his hand over that verse and recited what preceded and followed it. The Messenger of God ﷺ said, “Lift your hand, O one-eyed man.” When he lifted it, the verse of stoning became visible. The Messenger of God ﷺ thereupon commanded that they be stoned and said, “O Allah, I am the first to revive Your command after they had allowed it to die.”

In the narration of Abū Dāwūd it is related that when the Torah was brought, he removed the cushion from beneath him, placed it beneath the Book, and said, “I believe in you and in the One who revealed you.” Some have also reported that he stood up for it, though I have not found its chain of transmission; God knows best.

All of this conflicts with the claim advanced by many theologians and others that the Torah’s uninterrupted transmission (tawātur) ceased in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and that only ʿUzayr preserved it. If ʿUzayr—assuming he was a prophet—is divinely protected from error, then a report reaching an infallible person suffices, unless it is said that even he did not receive it through tawātur. Yet after him came Zechariah, John, and Jesus, all of whom adhered to the Torah; had it not been sound and operative, those infallible prophets would not have relied upon it.

Moreover, God Most High revealed to His Messenger Muhammad—the Seal of the Prophets (may God’s blessings and peace be upon him and upon them all)—verses censuring the Jews for their corrupt intention when they turned away from what they themselves acknowledged to be true, from what they were categorically obliged to uphold, and sought instead to litigate before the Messenger of God ﷺ while stubbornly opposing what he had brought, hoping, in their estimation, that he might rule in their favor on